by Jamie Sawyer
Red lights filled the console. Feng was jabbing at the controls, cursing to himself.
“What’s the holdup?” I asked.
Lopez started shooting, the harsh report of each shot bouncing off the closed walls.
“Just go!” she shouted.
“Saying it won’t make it happen!” Feng said. “We’re locked out of the controls—”
Pariah opened up with both barb-guns.
I went prone. “At least get the hatch shut, Feng!”
“I’m trying! I’m trying!”
We weren’t equipped for this. PDWs and pistols were for personal defence, not protracted combat ops. Instead of armour piercers and uranium tips, we were packing fran-gibles and small-calibre rounds. The Krell were armoured, and their morale was unshakeable. Boomer-fire—hot as plasma—strafed the pod’s entrance, and stray bone-rounds pinged off Pariah’s carapace.
The pod door began to hum shut …
… but the Krell kept coming. Metres from the hatch now.
“Mudak!” Novak yelled.
One of his crew—the only one left, I suddenly realised—had taken a hit to the chest. The big man dragged his comrade farther into the pod.
“I’m in!” said Feng. “I have control!”
Then the hatch shut.
“Nice work,” the Voice muttered. “Very nice work indeed, Jenkins.”
“Just launch us, Feng,” I said.
“Affirmative.”
The pod accelerated upwards, on nothing more than an energised rail that led into space. It was a cargo lift to the stars.
The craft was made for getting materiel off-world to waiting freighters, but it turned out that the promise of a pressurised interior was true enough. I discarded my headgear. Although the pod’s cold atmosphere made my skin prickle, we were all happy to get out of the survival-suits and throw off our Directorate disguises. I sat quietly, appreciating the throb of blood through my veins.
We’re alive. We’re almost off Jiog.
It was the almost that troubled me. The immediate thrill of surviving—of escaping the surface of Jiog in one piece—was beginning to wear off, to be replaced by abject exhaustion. My body was bruised, battered, aching. I’d forgotten about my arm and ribs during the escape, but now the pain had come back. I wanted to sleep so badly, and hunger gnawed at my stomach, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten properly in what seemed like an age.
Novak sat with the only member of his work crew that had made it off the surface. The man was sprawled on the deck, a nasty breach in the crew-suit showing where the ganger had been hit: a ragged hole that had probably punctured a lung, if not worse. I didn’t want to remember how badly that sort of injury hurt. A blackened spine—a Krell barb-round—poked from the ganger’s open wound. Those were particularly painful. The bone splintered inside the body, poison-tipped fragments worming their way to vital organs. The prisoner had been making a wet hacking sound for the last few minutes, and everyone except for Novak tried not to notice. I’d searched for medical supplies—for something that could ease his passing, because I was quite sure that he was going to die—but the pod didn’t carry that sort of equipment.
The man clutched Novak’s hand, and spoke gently in Russian. Novak talked back in the same language, pausing every few minutes so that his comrade could catch his breath.
“Life is pain, my friend,” Novak muttered, breaking into Standard.
The dying ganger grinned some more. He had blood on his teeth. “For some.”
Back to Russian. I pretended not to listen, not to hear, but I picked out some words. The ganger gave a name: Mish Vasnev. Then a rank: major. That didn’t mean much to me, but it had a surprising impact on Novak.
He gripped the ganger’s hand a little tighter. I could see tension on his face. “Major Mish Vasnev?”
“Da …”
“Where is Mish Vasnev?”
Who is Mish Vasnev? I asked myself. Novak had never mentioned him or her, not to me.
“She lives …” said the ganger, but his voice trailed off.
Then, with one final, eruptive gag, he went still. His glassy eyes looked up into space. Novak watched for a moment.
“He is dead,” he finally said. His disappointment was obvious.
“Shit. I’m sorry, Novak.”
“Do not be,” Novak said, still holding the man’s hand. “He will not be missed.”
“What was his name?”
“Was called Alexei.” Novak crumpled beside the body, fingers locked over his knees. “He was an asshole.”
“He helped us.”
Novak nodded, distantly. “We were brothers. Both Sons of Balash.”
Alexei’s dead eyes just stared on.
“He … he was Sim Ops too,” Novak said. “Another lifer. Like me.”
I sighed. “You’ll get your credit for every transition you did in that hellhole,” I said. “I’ll make sure of it.”
That was the deal: every time Novak died, a little was knocked off his sentence. Given enough transitions, he would be a free man. Novak’s eyes flared at mention of his credit.
“Good,” Novak said. “Is good.”
Novak wasn’t usually this talkative. He and I had once been taken prisoner aboard a Krell ark-ship. Sure that he would die in the fish prison, Novak had entered a sort of trance. I learnt how he had tried to leave the bratva—more specifically, the organisation that I now knew to be the Sons of Balash—and his wife and child had been murdered. He had subsequently been blamed, and that had resulted in his life sentence. The setting might be different, but I got just the same vibe from Novak as I did during that conversation. I almost asked him who Vali was. That was the name he had mentioned back on the train, when he had first rescued us from the interrogation chamber. His reaction on being pulled up on it by Lopez had been telling. But as I watched on, saw how shattered he was, I thought better of raising it now. It was another on a very long list of questions that I needed to ask if we ever got out of this alive …
“Take a look out here,” Zero said. She was crouched at the view-port.
“Not more shit, I hope,” Lopez said. She sat in another corner of the pod.
“Depends on your definition of shit,” Zero replied, with a tired smile on her face. “But you should take a look, Jenk.”
I dragged myself off the deck—despite the resistance that every muscle and bone in my body seemed to scream—to take a look through the view-port. We were almost up the rail now, reaching the mesosphere, and our position gave a bird’s-eye view of the planet below.
Jiog’s surface was claimed by a dozen black eyes—burning pits of destruction—that stared up into space. Nukes, plasma warheads or some more exotic weapon; whatever had caused the devastation, the effect was the same. Jiog was being razed to the ground.
“Lovely,” I said sarcastically. “I’ll be glad to see the back of it.”
“You haven’t seen it all yet. Check that out.”
She pointed out the sky above us, where the clouds gradually thinned.
There were Krell warships anchored in orbit above the planet. As P had told us, one of those was an ark-ship: bloated and lethal, swarming with smaller Krell bio-ships—
An explosion in low orbit was so bright that I had to shield my eyes.
“That could’ve been an energy core going off,” Feng said.
“Going to be raining metal on the surface for a while,” Lopez suggested. “Your buddies are doing a good job on the Directorate, Pariah.”
The alien had been so quiet since our launch that I had almost forgotten about it.
“Others are not ‘buddies,’” it replied. “Others are infected.”
“Whatever,” Lopez said. “The Directorate and the infected are welcome to each other.”
Kwan’s mobile command station, the Furious Retribution, was up there somewhere, but I was quite sure that she was big enough and ugly enough to live through this battle. Kwan had survived the attack on the train. I had
no doubt that he had a contingency plan in place, to ensure his safety if the planet fell.
Lopez crossed her arms over her chest, shivering. “How long till we reach our destination, Feng?”
Aided by Zero’s technical knowledge, Feng now had access to all of the pod’s systems via the control panel. I had the feeling that this operation was stretching his understanding of Korean to the limits, and despite his clone-class stamina, the kid looked completely exhausted. Everyone had their breaking point, and I could tell that Feng was approaching his.
“We’re headed to a cargo platform in low orbit,” he answered. He anxiously wetted his lips. “We’ll dock in five minutes, maybe.”
I looked down at the communicator-bead in my hand. I couldn’t even remember having taken it out of my ear, and now I saw that it had started blinking with an incoming signal. I settled it into my ear again, ready to listen to another round of the Voice’s instructions.
“Do you copy?” the Voice asked.
“That’s an affirmative,” I answered. “We’re heading up the rail.”
“We see you.”
“And?” I pressed. I detected a hint of reticence in the Voice’s mechanical tone, and I didn’t like it.
“We have a starship in low orbit. Once the pod docks, stay put. We’ll move into synchronous orbit, dock with the platform and take you aboard. But it’s going to take some time for us to reach you.”
“What’s your ETA?”
“Ten minutes, minimum.”
“Ten minutes? That’s too long.”
“It’s the best we can do.”
Bing!
An alert chime sounded over the pod’s comms system. As one, the Jackals scanned the sky and the land outside, searching for an explanation.
“Sitrep, Feng. What’s happening? I can’t see anything out here.”
Feng answered, “There’s another pod, coming up behind us.”
The control console began emitting the pitched beeping of a radar system. A graphic illustrated that the second pod was chasing us, adopting the same approach velocity, on Cargo Rail Two.
Lopez’s shoulders slumped. “Well that is just typical …”
The Voice broke in on the comms again. “We’re detecting another pod heading in your direction.”
“You’re a little late with that intel,” I said. “Can you reschedule the exfiltration?”
“No can do. Do you have spacesuits?”
I stared down at the stolen crew-suit. It wasn’t rated for use in hard vacuum. “No, we don’t.”
“The other pod’s accelerating,” Zero said, her knuckles turning white as she grasped the edge of the console. The readout on the screen flickered, mocking us, counting down faster and faster. “Less than eight minutes until interception.”
“It’s Kwan and Tang,” Feng said. “It has to be.”
“Mummy wants her baby back …” Novak muttered.
We were escaping Jiog’s upper atmosphere now. More explosions, source unknown, rippled across the horizon. I could make out the cargo platform above us, running lights flashing against the void. The facility looked so damned close.
“Is there anything you can use in your pod?” the Voice asked.
I turned to the Jackals. “Search this place. Fast!”
The squad immediately did as ordered. There were lockers around the perimeter of the capsule, but they contained only emergency respirators and a box of space flares. No good. Lopez tackled a metal crate that was locked to the deck and that looked more promising.
“Novak,” she said, “help me with this.”
With a snort, Novak levered the lid of the metal crate with one of his many shivs. It cracked open.
“Jackpot, yes?” the Russian said.
There were a half-dozen glossy black suits stockpiled inside. Lopez pulled one of them out. The tech was undoubtedly military-grade—much bigger and more heavily armoured than the crew-suits, endorsed with the Directorate Navy seal. The armour had grapnel launchers on each arm and was equipped with a full helmet for use in vacuum. Lopez prodded the oversized thruster rig attached to the back of the unit.
“Is this a flight-pack?” she asked.
“Fucking A it is,” Feng muttered. “They must’ve been loading them onto one of those warships.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Don’t question good luck.”
IK-5 “Ikarus” suits. I recognised the armour, and repressed the memory of our last few minutes aboard the Santa Fe. The Directorate Navy had been using this armour. It was pressurised, heavy-duty tech, would withstand the rigours of vac-exposure, of a prolonged EVA. In short, it was exactly what we were looking for.
I wasted no time. “Feng, do you know how to use these suits?”
Lopez tossed one of the suits to Feng.
He nodded at me. “I know how to use them.”
“You’re going to show the rest of us. Are they powered?”
“Fully charged and ready for use,” Feng said.
“Then get dressed, people.” To the Voice, I said, “We’ve found some Ikarus flight-suits.”
“Very convenient,” the Voice said. “Use them. Stay in contact.”
“Affirmative. Team, saddle up. We’re going EVA.”
“I’ve never used an Ikarus suit,” Zero suddenly broke in as we all began to climb into the armour.
“That’s kind of stating the obvious,” Lopez said. “None of us has. It’s Directorate-issue; Feng will know what to do.”
“But I … I’ve never used a spacesuit at all,” Zero said. “Like, never even spacewalked.”
“Not even in Basic training?” Lopez ventured.
“Not even,” Zero confirmed. “The techs found out that I was a negative before I got that far through Basic, and, well, there didn’t seem much point in going through with the Vacuum Operations training if I wasn’t going to be able to use a sim …”
“Shit,” Lopez said. “Is this going to be a problem?”
“I’m not saying I won’t do it, but I’m not sure that I can.”
“First time for everything,” Novak offered. “Feng can carry you, yes?”
Feng nodded. “I’ll take care of you, Zero.”
Zero grimaced. “I guess so.”
“What about fish?” Novak said. “Has no suit.”
“We could adapt an oxygen bottle, maybe fit a mask,” Zero suggested.
“Didn’t know that you cared,” Lopez said as she finished fitting her own suit.
Pariah’s bio-suit and respirator were gone, and plainly none of the human-grade equipment would fit.
“Unnecessary,” Pariah declared. “We do not require protection.”
There was not time to argue with P about that. I’d already clambered into the lower half of my new suit and started zipping up the inner body-lining.
The chiming from the console had now increased in pitch, becoming more insistent.
“You’re making a habit of wearing Directorate uniforms,” the Voice said over the comms. “Try not to get too comfortable in them.”
“I’ll try.”
CHAPTER NINE
SUITED AND REBOOTED
The cargo pod slid into the docking terminal. There was a gentle clunk through the hull, a rumble through the structure around us, and we were finally still.
“Comms?”
“Check.”
“Suits sealed?”
“Check.”
“Internal oxygen supply?”
“Check.”
“Ready?”
I stared back at my squad, now all suited and booted and ready to roll. Helmets locked in place, fully vacuum-sealed. Nods all round.
“Then open the hatch.”
There was no airlock on the capsule. No going back once the pod was breached. We’d have to live with it, or die with it, as the case may be.
“Breaching,” Feng said, holding up a gloved hand.
The pod door cracked open. There was an immediate rush of venting atmosphere,
and we braced to avoid being sucked out into space. The hurricane was intense but brief.
Then the silence.
“Keep your comms and beacons on at all times,” I ordered. The suits were networked, to allow the wearers to operate as a flight wing.
“The Ikarus is closer to a one-man space craft than an armoured suit,” Feng explained. “It’s got everything that a trooper needs for a deep-space operation. Life support, cooling system, grav-stabilisers and a flight-rig.”
We slowly crept out of the pod, onto the cargo platform. Magnetic-locks in the soles of each boot automatically activated. I grappled with the exposed steelwork of the terminal to steady myself.
“What about a heat shield for reentry?” Lopez asked speculatively.
I felt the touch of vertigo as I looked over the edge of the platform. The vista outside had been replaced with an ugly layer of cloud below us and space above. I swallowed. It was a very long way down to the surface of Jiog, but if we happened to break orbit, that would be the least of our concerns.
“There’s no heat shield,” Feng said. “But don’t worry about that. You get pulled into the atmosphere, the drag will kill you.”
“You’ll burn up,” I confirmed. “Simple as that.”
Lopez nodded. “Right. I’ll try to avoid doing that then.”
“Would help if knew what controls mean,” Novak said. He was struggling, breathing hard over the communicator. Novak never did like zero-G, and this op was no different.
“The flight control systems are in the gloves,” Feng hurriedly said. He spoke automatically, the words spilling out of him: more deep-knowledge. “Flex your right palm to activate thrust. Left to use grav-assist.”
“Well, that was the quickest flight lesson in history,” Lopez said, bobbing free of the platform. “But these controls look a lot more complex than that …”
The helmet HUD was painted with unidentifiable symbols and text, glowing neon graphics that meant nothing to me. Meanwhile, there was a computer built into the suit’s left arm, and that was also flashing with a series of images. The Ikarus suit clearly wasn’t made for Alliance soldiers.
“A trooper could get hurt using hostile tech in these conditions,” I decided.
